Wednesday, March 19, 2014

Common Core Washington Fails First Test

The Seattle Times is reporting that the organization developing new Common Core Assessments for Washington State and a number of other states "got cold feet" and have delayed the scheduled test of the test that was supposed to begin Tuesday.

They have informed Washington education officials that the test has been postponed until next Tuesday---March 25.

Here's more information on Washington State, including which schools are affected, and more information on Common Core Standards with helpful links to why some educators, including a math professor at Stanford University, oppose implementation of the Common Core Standards.

The Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium that is responsible for implementing new Standards testing in Washington and other states say they have concerns concerning the trial tests that had been scheduled for this week. They have moved it to next Tuesday.

Whatever the reason for the reschedule, this is the path to fully implementing Common Core Standards.

In 2015 these tests will replace the Measurements of Student Progress (MSP) tests for grades 3 through 8 in math and English.

This is a test of the tests and will become a yardstick for one of the most sweeping changes in public or government run education in 30 years.

These trial tests will be conducted in Kent, Highline, Bellevue, Lake Washington, Mukilteo and Edmonds school districts.

The scores from these tests won't count, however, most Washington students will also be excused from taking the usual MSP math and English tests this spring according to the Seattle Times.

Beginning with the class of 2019, Washington students will have to pass the 11th-grade Common Core exams to graduate from high school.

While this change in testing the test is creating much difficulty for teachers who are now scrambling to re-do their daily lesson plans to accommodate the schedule change-----Common Core is creating a firestorm of conflict and concern as it moves ahead in implementing government influenced, top down federalized education.

Common Core implementation will impact every school age child in America and their families. And it will do so on several levels. It will also alter America forever.

Common Core will not only impact "public education," but private and parochial schools as well. It will further secularize the culture and rewrite morality.

The Home School Legal Defense Association has put together this information for all home school and private school families. Please read it.

Common Core Standards has created a firestorm---some strongly advocate it, others strongly oppose.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has given $2,306,241,786---that's $2.3 billion---to Common Core and related educational programs. Obviously the Gates believe in it.

However, Indiana, one of the first states to adopt it, is trying to get out of the program---or a least "pause" their implementation. It is causing conflict across the state and within the State Legislature. I wrote about it last week.

The same thing is happening in Georgia, with similar conflict.

Interestingly, one of the issues being raised here in Washington by those who would normally be "all in" with the Standards is the fact that many students can't even pass the present standards, so, they say, a great burden is being placed on teachers to change what they do in the classroom to achieve an even higher bar.

The greatest concern and opposition to Common Core Standards does not concern its implementation, it concerns the harm it will do to our kids and our families, and ultimately to our country.

Rather than summarize the following information, I am giving you several links that will lead to a substantial amount of relevant information that I believe can be helpful to parents and families.

The Common Core Standards is massive and complex, but I believe it is absolutely essential that parents and grandparents have an adequate understanding of what it is about, how it impacts your family and how it alters the culture.

I strongly oppose Common Core Standards. Here are some of the reasons:

1. Common Core will negatively impact home schooling families and those families who send the child to private school. It isn't only about public education.

2. Common Core math falls far short of making students "college ready." This is an article written by Dr. James Milgram, professor of math at Stanford University and Emmet McGroaty, author of the book, "Why Common Core is Bad For America".

3. Common Core "dumbs down" education while attempting to create "fairness" and "equality." This link also includes 13 additional links with more information about Common Core.

I think most all of us agree that public education in America is broken.

Its methods are outdated and it has been hi-jacked by secular progressives with an extreme agenda to remake American culture.

I personally believe that the primary responsibility for educating children falls squarely on the family.

"Higher education" is often not higher. It is morally bankrupt and its methodology is deeply flawed.

Consistent with that fundamental belief, we must look at all means of education through that lens.

I believe Common Core Standards moves our culture further from the values upon which our nation was founded and has prospered. Millions of Americans still hold those values. The present government and current leadership in public education do not.

Planned Parenthood, NARAL, and several homosexual advocacy organizations, with unwavering support from the White House, have so infiltrated the educational system and the textbook selection that they have replaced what is "normal" and "natural" with perversion. And it is enforced through political correctness and bogus definitions of "fairness," equality" and "inclusiveness."

This agenda has also penetrated the United States military. Liberty and freedom is regularly challenged and eroded by these same forces.

History gives us a very clear look at the one thread that is found in the activities of every totalitarian leader. They always institute centralized or federalized education. Whomever molds the mind of our children ultimately dominates the population. Even if it takes a couple of generations.

Tyranny is always built upon a dependent citizenry and control of education.

John Stuart Mill in his classic "On Liberty" said there is an "inherent problem with government schools."

Common Core sets the stage to remove what remains of local and parental control of public education, giving ultimately full control to the government. It will take awhile, but it will happen. Textbooks will be required to conform to national standards for the sake of national testing to improve national education scores. This will demand managed outcomes and result in every child becoming the image of the system. And the system will be driven by political correctness, so-called fairness, inclusiveness and equality. And it will be a highly secularized State.

Mill also wrote, "A general State education is a mere contrivance for moulding people to be exactly like one another; and as the mould in which it casts them is that which pleases the predominate power in the government...it establishes a despotism over the mind, leading to a natural tendency to one over the body."

There is a better way. Parents are responsible for their children's education. All assistance to a child's educational process (school, etc.) must be evaluated through that parental responsibility.

God places a very high value on education---so must we. He says this in regard to His laws and principles.

(Deuteronomy 6:7 ESV) "You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise."

If you actually stop and think about it, you'll see the sense of it. Consider: Science seeks truth by gaining an understanding of the world that it can measure. Faith seeks truth, also, but by other means - by spiritual and relevatory understanding. As long as both seek truth, they will arrive at the same conclusions, or tend toward them same conclusions. Because truth is truth.

Certainly, both can easily go off track - by putting an agenda ahead of the truth. So, for example, the Chinese gov't has decided that the one-child policy is "good" for society. But I think anyone can see that it is harmful to individuals and families. To see it as a good for society, one must put the desire for population control higher on the priority list than the happiness, rights, and privacy of families. This runs directly opposite Natural Law, and so it is a highly controversial decision, and that means it will always be frought with difficulties to implement and enforce. Whenever people are being pushed against their nature, there will be trouble.

So, this is an area where we benefit by being informed about human nature, and faith (done right) does a far better job of that than science. (Science can only measure the aftermath of society-changing policies. So far, it has been woefully inadequate to accurately predict the outcomes in advance.)

Simple fact: Science cannot inform us on things that it cannot measure. Science cannot explain matters of the human heart. And science cannot say "there is no God" or "there is a God", because God is outside of creation, while science is inside of creation, and cannot measure anything outside of creation's boundaries.

Does truth change? Science has different understandings today (thanks to better measuring tools) than it did 100 years ago. If science was speaking truth 100 years ago, did that truth change? Of course not: our measuring tools are better now. So: science wasn't speaking truth then. Well, how do you know that science today is speaking truth? How do you know that we won't have better measuring tools in 100 years that will make today's "truth" sound as silly as those we look back at in our history? Flat earth, Helio-centrism, leeches for healing, etc. (Frankly, I can't see how people can put so much "faith" in science, which has repeatedly proven that we don't know as much as we think we do, and there's so much more to learn.)

Truth is truth, even if science can't measure it. Revelatory faith brings us to truth that science cannot measure. But it is amazing how often that science later catches up, and ends up saying the same thing that faith already told us long ago - especially in matters related to human nature and what is best for individuals and society.

Note that not all religions align with the Natural Law. I am only speaking about faith that is rooted in Natural Law, and have no intention of attempting to defend any faith that does not.

Faith tells us that the human person has inestimable value. Science cannot speak to that at all. It can only tells us if a person is "useful". That attitude treats the human person as a commodity, robbing human beings of their inherent dignity, an inevitable outcome when we act against our nature. Human nature (informed by Faith) warns us that some things - such as IVF and abortion and state-controlled education - are harmful to everyone. As Dr. Martin Luther King famously said: "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere".

Stop and think about that for a minute, and maybe you'll see that we are far better off being informed by faith AND science, not just one or the other. Here's a couple of articles on this topic from more educated scholars than I could ever hope to be: http://catholiceducation.org/articles/education/ed0294.htmhttp://www.strangenotions.com/bill-nye-ken-ham-and-the-catholic-third-way/

my grandchildren, educated in private school, were highly successful in various sciences (planning to pursue engineering in college) and also math -- and, they created "creative thinking." Anonymous, do your research, parochial schools also produce students who excel in the sciences and math and have free thinking minds uncluttered by federal government dogma.

Anonymous, Who is trying to "hide kids from science and creative thinking skills"? FYI: Faith and reason are not opposed, as they both tend toward truth.

A bit of actual studying of history shows that this is simply not the case. For example: there are 35 craters on the moon named after Jesuit priests, who were also scientists, which is how they got the honor of having a crater named after them. Who came up with the Big Bang theory? Monseigneur Georges Lemaître, a Belgian priest. Note that he never denounced his faith, and the Church never booted him out. Because faith and reson are NOT mutually exclusive! God said "Let there be light", and the Big Bang is one theory about how He made that happen.

Note that I am not defending every brand of Christianity here. As you well know, there are lots of different Christian groups, and they don't agree on everything. It would be ridiculous to fault one group for the nutty beliefs of a different group, as I'm sure you can understand. Are you aware that many (most?) Christians do NOT believe in the young earth claims? Many (most?) are perfectly happy to accept some claims of the evolutionists. We understand that God created everything, including evolution. You know, even us ordinary folk are able to create things that mold and change into something else. Ask any baker. So, obviously, God could create a world in a nanosecond or a zillion years that then unfolded according to His design, including some evolutionary processes. No problemo. My faith has plenty of room for God's creativity. And man's!

If you actually stop and think about it, you'll see the sense of it. Consider: Science seeks truth by gaining an understanding of the world that it can measure. Faith seeks truth, also, but by other means - by spiritual and relevatory understanding. As long as both seek truth, they will arrive at the same conclusions, or tend toward them same conclusions. Because truth is truth.

Certainly, both can easily go off track - by putting an agenda ahead of the truth. So, for example, the Chinese gov't has decided that the one-child policy is "good" for society. But I think anyone can see that it is harmful to individuals and families. To see it as a good for society, one must put the desire for population control higher on the priority list than the happiness, rights, and privacy of families. This runs directly opposite Natural Law, and so it is a highly controversial decision, and that means it will always be frought with difficulties to implement and enforce. Whenever people are being pushed against their nature, there will be trouble.

So, this is an area where we benefit by being informed about human nature, and faith (done right) does a far better job of that than science. (Science can only measure the aftermath of society-changing policies. So far, it has been woefully inadequate to accurately predict the outcomes in advance.)

Simple fact: Science cannot inform us on things that it cannot measure. Science cannot explain matters of the human heart. And science cannot say "there is no God" or "there is a God", because God is outside of creation, while science is inside of creation, and cannot measure anything outside of creation's boundaries.

Does truth change? Science has different understandings today (thanks to better measuring tools) than it did 100 years ago. If science was speaking truth 100 years ago, did that truth change? Of course not: our measuring tools are better now. So: science wasn't speaking truth then. Well, how do you know that science today is speaking truth? How do you know that we won't have better measuring tools in 100 years that will make today's "truth" sound as silly as those we look back at in our history? Flat earth, Helio-centrism, leeches for healing, etc. (Frankly, I can't see how people can put so much "faith" in science, which has repeatedly proven that we don't know as much as we think we do, and there's so much more to learn.)

Truth is truth, even if science can't measure it. Revelatory faith brings us to truth that science cannot measure. But it is amazing how often that science later catches up, and ends up saying the same thing that faith already told us long ago - especially in matters related to human nature and what is best for individuals and society.

Note that not all religions align with the Natural Law. I am only speaking about faith that is rooted in Natural Law, and have no intention of attempting to defend any faith that does not.

Faith tells us that the human person has inestimable value. Science cannot speak to that at all. It can only tells us if a person is "useful". That attitude treats the human person as a commodity, robbing human beings of their inherent dignity, an inevitable outcome when we act against our nature. Human nature (informed by Faith) warns us that some things - such as IVF and abortion and state-controlled education - are harmful to everyone. As Dr. Martin Luther King famously said: "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere".

Stop and think about that for a minute, and maybe you'll see that we are far better off being informed by faith AND science, not just one or the other. Here's a couple of articles on this topic from more educated scholars than I could ever hope to be.

Science doesn't claim to speak truth. It only claims to speak the best possible theories from available evidence. Those theories are always subject change due to new information. In fact, science thrives on adjusting theories based on new information. It's the heart of science.

Religion claims to know the absolute absolute positive unchangeable truth. Religion resists the discovery and spread of new information because it may (and often has) disprove what they claimed was the absolute truth.

Science does claim to speak truth. If you release something, it hits the ground. The earth revolves around the sun. the moon revolves around the earth. A mass requires a certain amount of boost to reach a certain speed, etc,

To which religion are you referring? First, Christianity is a relationship, it was never intended to be a religion, although many have made it one.

The Bible claimes that Quirinus was governor of Judea when Jesus was born. Archeologists said no because they found he was governor during a different time period, until......they found another inscription proving he was governor at the time of the birth of Jesus. He was governor twice!

The cities of the plains were dismissed as myth, until they found them, precisely where God said they were, destroyed by fire.

Chariot wheels on the bottom of the Red Sea? Hmmmmm, nah, can't be. Guess what? They"re there, although the Egyptian government won't allow an expedition the photos speak volumes.

2000 years! All that time atheists and agnostics have tried again and again to disprove the accuracy of the Bible, in EVERY instance they have failed.

Guess what? They will continue to fail and many have and will actually come to a saving faith in Jesus Christ.

I've never seen science declare absolute truths as religions do. You are referencing a couple physical laws as they behave in a specific environment. It's all relative and subject to new information. That's the beauty of science versus those who claim to absolutely know what they couldn't possibly know.

Ok, when you release a ball and it goes up without throwing it, come talk to me about how relative gravity is. Science, as I said , has verified many biblical accounts. They are not mutually exclusive.

Even if Common Core better prepares students for College, and makes for an acceptable standard in education, I don't believe it's worth the cost to our freedom. I believe the teachers and students, as well as the parents should have their freedom and enjoy it, not for license but for good education. I believe it is there that they will be the most happy. I believe a happy classroom can be a good one.